WASHINGTON - December 26 -

What: Corporate Crime Reporter will release a report documenting 34 special deals - deferred prosecution and non prosecution agreements - with major American corporations alleged to have engaged in serious crimes.

When: Wednesday, December 28, 2005, 10 a.m.

Where: National Press Club.

It used to be that major corporations caught committing serious crimes would be brought to justice - convicted of a crime and sentenced.

No longer.

Now, under a new policy implemented by the Department of Justice since 2001, major corporations caught committing serious crimes are not convicted of a crime and sentenced.

In fact, no major corporation caught engaging in accounting or securities fraud has been convicted since the Arthur Andersen conviction in June 2003.

Instead, the Justice Department and state prosecutors are offering major corporations - including Adelphia, Computer Associates, KPMG, Merrill Lynch, Monsanto, Sears, Shell, WorldCom/MCI - special deals - known as deferred prosecutions or non prosecution agreements.

Under these agreements, prosecutors agree not to criminally prosecute the corporation to conviction in exchange for cooperation against culpable executives, implementation of corporate monitors, and fines.

On Wednesday, December 28, 2005, the Corporate Crime Reporter will release a report documenting 34 such agreements with major American corporations.

The report - titled "Crime Without Conviction: The Rise of Deferred and Non Prosecution Agreements" - will include most of the actual agreements themselves.

The report finds that prosecutors have entered into twice as many non-prosecution and deferred prosecution agreements with major American corporations in the last three years (23 agreements between 2003 to 2005) than they have in the previous eleven years (11 agreements between 1992 to 2002).

In some cases, as in the KPMG case, where obstruction is alleged, line prosecutors who want to criminally prosecute the corporation to conviction have reportedly been overruled by their superiors.

Deferred prosecution and non prosecution agreements were originally intended for minor drug cases and juvenile delinquency cases.

In fact, the U.S. Attorney's manual is explicit in this regard stating that a major objective of these agreements is to "save prosecutive and judicial resources for concentration on major cases."

But now these agreements are being routinely employed to relieve large U.S. corporations of their criminal liability in major bribery and fraud cases.

"There has been a sea-change in corporate criminal prosecution over the last couple of years," said Russell Mokhiber editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter. "Just a few years ago, corporations would protect the individuals executives from federal prosecutors and plead the corporation. Today, corporate defense counsel are working with federal prosecutors to send the executives to jail. In return, federal prosecutors are agreeing not to convict the corporation. This has undermined corporate criminal liability and may be doing serious damage to the federal campaign to deter corporate crime."

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